FCO Consular staff visit Mogadishu
On 10 July 2013 two British consular staff visited Somalia, the first such visit in nearly a quarter of a century since the closure of the UK Embassy in Mogadishu in January 1991.
During the visit Kelly Mason (Vice Consul in Nairobi) and Eric Taylor (Consular Regional Director for Africa) familiarised themselves with local conditions and visited the site of the UK’s new Embassy, opened by William Hague in April.
Speaking after the visit, Eric Taylor said:
“The UK is actively seeking to normalise its relationship with Somalia across the board as the country stabilises. Our visit to Mogadishu today is part of our wider strategy of looking at how, if possible, we might re-introduce a limited consular service for the many British citizens there, subject to on-going security constraints. Whilst that situation continues to limit severely our ability to assist Britons in Somalia, we will now look at how we might be able to improve the remote service we currently offer from Nairobi over the coming months”.